I Did It... Sorta

I did it! I won NaNo! Granted, I don't FEEL like I won, but, hey, why not get the credit for my effort? Right?

I tried. I really did. I was on vacation last week so I could visit my mom and her family for Thanksgiving, and then spend the rest of the week with Hubby to celebrate his birthday. Which reminds me.

Belated birthday at this point, but I still wanted
to gush over how wonderful he is. <3

Anyway, I was on vacation. I could write more-or-less all I wanted. As I mentioned last week, I stole away a little to punch some words out last Saturday and Sunday while visiting my family. Even cranked some more out on Monday. But, for me, Tuesday was going to be the big day. I wrote my blog and I was going to hide away the rest of the day - since I didn't need to do the normal "errand day" things like laundry and grocery shopping - and just write. Hubby had eight other days alone with me, we could sacrifice Tuesday.

It started off well enough. I had my blog done, and Hubby made the meals that day as I worked so I didn't need to stop for long. I didn't think I was going to make up the last 20,000 words, but I thought I could put a good dent in them. Maybe close to half if I put in as much effort and time as I did for my Varekai recap.

Then it was about 5pm and time to go to writing group for three hours of writing sprints; we added an extra hour each week for NaNo.

First, Hubby helped me lug two garbage bags and one wine box full of books to the library for donation.... only to find out that they don't accept donations outside of August.

So I left my lunch-boxed dinner and laptop with the librarian as Hubby and I lugged the books back home for storage. I then made it back to the library about 10min later and headed up to writing group.

That's when it all went downhill.

I had the NaNo site up to periodically update the word count whenever I saved the file. I had my file open to just jump right back into it when I got settled, and I may have had a music player open or something since I write best when listening to music.

I settled in, plugged in my earbuds, and waited for my computer to acknowledge that I was typing. The lag was killing me. It wasn't registering at all. I then tried to close down the music player and NaNo site so I JUST had the word document up. I thought that maybe since my laptop wasn't properly connecting to the library wifi - which always lags my computer anyway - that it was slowing my whole system down.

After waiting a few minutes for my computer to "catch up" nothing happened. The programs were still open and weren't closing. I then tried good old CTRL+ALT+DELETE to try to bring up the program manager application so I could shut down the programs that way. After four attempts to bring up Program Manager, waiting about 3 minutes between each try, and the darn thing STILL wouldn't open up, I gave up and angrily closed my laptop. I felt guilty about making such a loud slamming sound with my fellow writers trying to concentrate, but no one seemed to skip a beat.

I then huffed over to the center of the room to grab a pencil and started writing in my red notebook dedicated to "Miraculous Ladybug" fanfiction. I jotted down some notes I had on a potential Akuma Villain, as well as notes on what I know I want to improve upon when I go back to revise the NaNo version of Peeping Tomcat.

The first twenty minute sprint was up and I hadn't added a single word. I had the vague startings of a new villain, and some notes on how to improve the first chapter of PT.

Everyone else chatted during the down time, but I again fought with my computer, hoping being in sleep mode for about ten minutes would be enough to kill the lag. It wasn't. I also didn't have a full twenty minutes before everyone ran out of things to talk about and we went back to writing. I continued to fight with my computer, which all but froze at this point, for another five or ten minutes before again giving up and snapping it closed; a bit softer, this time to not irritate everyone.

I scribbled down a few more ideas to kill the second twenty minute sprint. More people talked about their projects, and we welcomed a new member during our down time, and I again tried not to be too disconnected and distracted by my fussing with my laptop.

Once more we went back to writing before the twenty minute down time was up, which meant that within an hour, instead of three sprints and three down-times, we were looking at four twenty minute sprints with barely ten minutes in between.

I COULD HAVE GOTTEN SO MUCH WRITING DONE!

One of the women in the group likes to tell us how much she wrote in the twenty minute sprints, and each time she averaged about 150 words or so. I don't know if she mentally slows down to collect her thoughts before writing, or if I'm a faster typist, but I average about 500 words per sprint, so each time she called out how many she wrote I could only think of how many I COULD have written. I feel a bit guilty about that, but it is what it is.

After being at writing group for about ninety minutes and not getting ANYTHING accomplished because my laptop STILL wouldn't work, I gave up. At this point I had hard-pressed my laptop to turn it off before rebooting it. Only for it to give me some sort of "Auto Repair" program alert and then freeze during the initiation of it. My computer screen would just go blank with the mouse arrow just kind of.... there. The arrow followed my mouse movements, so that was fine, but the rest of the screen was just black. Four attempts to reboot my computer, and I got the same result each time.

Which means everything I wrote on Tuesday was gone! Over 1000 words gone.... AGAIN!

My thumbdrive wasn't staying in the USB port well enough to perpetually keep it in so I could save to both the laptop and thumbdrive each time I saved. So I had gotten into the habit of save CONSTANTLY while on the laptop, but only save to the thumbdrive at the end of the day and/or when I completed a chapter. I would then update my Google Docs file at the end of the night as well - since that's even more tedious to keep updating each time I save on my laptop - and at the end of the week I would save to a second thumbdrive.

After losing the whole novel once before, this was my new routine. I never expected my laptop - which I've only had for about 18months - was going to just DIE on me out of nowhere!

So everything I had done on Tuesday was just gone. GONE! YET AGAIN! I still had the nearly-30,000 words I wrote by the end of Monday, but nothing else. All that catching up I did, and all the catching up I could have done during writing group, was killed.

I tried to be as calm and discrete as possible as I quietly packed up my laptop and notebook, and returned the pencil to the center of the room. I was apparently very noticeable anyway, though. I had to stop my voice from shaking out of pure frustration as I told the group what was going on, how I was about to drop-kick my laptop out of the window, and that I just needed to go home before I punched a wall. They all understood my frustration, and wished me luck as I left.

My intention was to just steal Hubby's laptop to finish my story from where I left off on Monday.

Then HIS computer started acting up. Apparently HP and/or Windows 10 is all sorts of done with letting people use Chrome, because any time he tried to bring up the internet via Chrome, our preferred server, it would lag or randomly freeze the computer.

We have yet to see if the computer will behave itself if we cave and just used Window Edge....

So, my attempt to continue writing via Hubby's computer was also a bust. I couldn't even get online to post my story, Varekai recap, and November blog posts to the NaNo site to verify the word count.

I had to run to the library computers for that, but the library only allows 1hr stints at the computers, so I couldn't really use them for all the writing catch-up I needed to do.

I did manage to verify the word count of the story, and my recap, and all of the blog posts, in order to surpass the 50,000 words. yay.....

I feel a little cheap about how I ended up "winning," but, as I mentioned last week, I feel like persevering and still trying to finish the month even with all the technical difficulties I've had is a valid "win." For the rest of my life I think I'll look at that Winner badge with a bit of bittersweetness, but I think I'd be more upset with myself if I DIDN'T get that win for this year....

Anyway, I spent the rest of the week trying to check in on things online periodically via our smartphone - which has Hubby logged into FB, so it's not the best for me to use for that - and my 3DS; once I found it.

Not the best resources to do much with, and I can't really bring up videos, ad-intense websites, or anything like that. But it was enough to not be completely off the grid this past week.

While we did have some fun times celebrating Hubby's birthday this week, it was definitely one of those vacations you need a vacation from by the time you're done. If I was at work I could at least feel better at not being able to write or do much online.

Knives from the Scott Pilgrim comic books
by Bryan Lee O'Malley

But, hey, at least I got this glorious alert on the NaNo website:

Once I figure out what I'm doing, computer wise, I'll definitely have to check out the link for the "Now What?" months. I did tell people that I wanted to get at least the first chapter of the polished Peeping Tomcat story up by end of March/beginning of April. So I'm hoping I can find something I can use for more than an hour at a time so I can work on that.

I'm also hoping that the second season of Miraculous Ladybug premieres on Netflix soon. I've already watched the first half of the season thanks to YouTube and fan-subs, but I can't wait to binge the whole thing. It might help me get excited about this doomed project again, as well as better get a feel for how I should write it.

In the meantime, I'm waiting for FedEx to deliver a replacement power cable for my netbook so I can use that again. Then maybe I'll be able to take a step back and figure out what to do next for my main laptop.

As of right now, it seems that the hard drive may have gotten screwed up somehow between me writing at home on Tuesday and starting it up again in the writing group. Now I have to figure out if I just survive with my netbook until Tax Refund season again, travel back to Best Buy during the Holiday Season in order to try to get 18month financing for a good computer, just drop a little over $300 on another simple "netbook-sized" laptop, or try buying a replacement hard drive and seeing if that works.....

Joy......

The other thing to think about is if I should bother going to writing group tonight. The next one will be December 19th. Which means if I don't go tonight I will have walked out last week, and then gone two weeks without going to a meeting.

At the same time, though, I don't have anything to read..... but I could still hear what others have written and comment.... Gah, I don't know.

I'm running out of time at the library, though, so I guess I'll spend the next six hours or so debating what to do next. At least I still have my notebooks and pencils, right?

NaNo Winner!

That's right! I did it! I finally did it! Six years after I attempted my first NaNo, after five attempts, after a year hiatus from the challenge: I did it!

Pardon me for puffing my chest up a bit, but this is such an accomplishment! It'd be an even bigger one had I actually finished the book. Nope. Jolene has a much more epic back story than I thought; at least, in the first draft form. Over 50,000 words into the story, and I'm only about 60% of the way, if that. It's a lot more of an undertaking than I thought.

Back to the important part, though. I completed NaNo finally! Conquered that beast. It was a bit of a struggle. I had to write my fingers off to accomplish it. The last two days I wrote 13,745 words! I think that's the most I've written in such a short time. If it isn't, it's in the top three. I was actually nervous about finishing on time.

I mean, technically, I didn't. Five minutes til midnight, and I still had 1100-some words to write. I ended up cheating: I took last week's blog post, and added it to my word count in order to surpass 50,000 words. A lot of people do that: literally count all the narratives they write; even if they're non-fiction. To make up for it, and to make sure the NOVEL had over 50,000 words, I stayed up until nearly 2am sleepily typing away. I ended up with 50,883 words! That surpassed what I had when I cheated with my blog post, which was only about 50,100-something.

That's when I majorly screwed up.

See, I wanted an accurate count on my novel for posterity sake. So, here it was, 2am on December 1st, and I couldn't re-validate my novel. I already had all the "winner" bragging rights posted everywhere on my NaNo profile. I had the purple "winner" banner. The 2016 medallion on my author info page was also a pretty purple and said "winner" instead of "participant." I could download a winner certificate, could save the pretty "Winner" banners for both this blog and my Facebook profile. I could get access to the NaNoWriMo 2016 Winner profile picture too. Not to mention access to all the discounts winners receive as "goodies"; discounts to a bunch of cool writing-related programs and instructors that sponsor NaNoWriMo.

Fun side note: the only fully free goodie - the rest are large discounts - was the James Patterson MasterClass lesson on editing. I had a nice chuckle about that since I already have that class, thanks to my Mommy buying me the full class series for my birthday two years ago.

Anyway, I already had all the fun stuff and bragging rights. I knew that while I extended the deadline by two hours, I figured it countered the original cheat of adding 1700 words not involved in my novel. I had actually won it! I could have left things alone, but noooooo, I had to have that accurate word count of my novel. So I manually overrode the November 30th word count; except my touchpad jumped, and I accidentally saved the new word count without all the digits. I had unintentionally dropped my word count below 50,000 words, which had the site recant all the "winner" benefits; putting me back to "participant" status. Even when I fixed the word count to my 50,885 close count, since I couldn't verify the count any longer, the site wouldn't give me back my hard-earned winnings.

The whole thing really deflated me, and killed all the excitement I had for surpassing 50,000 words in a month. A bit depressed, I tried writing to the Office of Letters and Light; the non-profit that runs NaNo.

I'm happy to report that yesterday I received an email stating that they had reverified my word count on their end, and reinstated my winner status for this year! YAY!

Hacker Girl Facebook Sticker
by Birdman Inc

So, let's talk a bit about this challenge. First off, I want to show everyone more-or-less my day-by-day progress.

First up, what my stats screen actually looks like over at NaNoWriMo.org
Look at those pretty purple "Winner" icons!
Isn't it cool to see those spikes in my writing?

My completed NaNoWriMo 2016 calendar. Even with seven sad faces of nothingness, I made it!
14,025 words in three days! Nuts!
Calendar created by Dave Seah

So cool, right? After that craziness on the 30th, I just had to take a rest. So, I've been spending the past week FINALLY reading "The Hammer of Thor" by Rick Riordan.

I have to say, I'm somehow shocked at how topical and kind of progressive this man is. In the Heroes of Olympus he's had openly gay characters. In "The Hidden Oracle" he not only has the gay characters as an adorable couple, but has a blatantly pan-sexual character; constantly talking about his two greatest lost loves: one male; one female. In "Hammer of Thor" we're introduced to a transgender/gender-fluid character. He even tried to have his main character Magnus try to empathize with the concept of trangender by remembering a time that he was forced to write with his right hand for a school year, even though he's naturally left-handed. Magnus admitted it's a poor analogy, but I give Riordan props for trying to find a way to explain this experience to his middle-grade target demographic.

When I haven't been working or reading, I've been spending the rest of my now opened up free time to celebrate two birthdays!

Old man is 33 now. :D

We finished last week celebrating my Hubby's birthday with Cards Against Humanity and booze. It was a fun time that included finally officially meeting Ronoxym and Cyhyr's baby girl. I mean, they popped in with her when she was only a month old or so, but she was asleep, and I was busy running a D&D session, so I didn't really get to MEET her. She was so smiley. Apparently she takes after Daddy, and loves meeting new people.

The other birthday celebration included more booze, but a movie this time as I crashed over at Spink's place.

Happy 24th, Spink!

It was fun to cram in so much socializing after semi-neglecting it....

And now, because I'm still a proud little peacock, I'm going to finish up with a few stats that at least I found interesting about my book. You can just stop here if you don't care.

I wrote 26 chapters ranging from as little as 1051 words to as many as 3105 words. My average word count per chapter was 1957 words, even though not a single chapter actually had 1900-some words. Oh, the glory of math.... In contrast, my MEDIAN chapter length was 1804 words per chapter. The official breakdown is as follows:

• One chapter finishing with 1000 and change
• One chapter at 1100+ words
• One chapter each as well for 1200 and 1300 ranges
• Two chapters ended in the 1470s
• Three chapters had 1500-some words
• Three chapters were also within the 1600s
• One chapter - on the lower end of the median - had 1740 words.
• Two chapters had 1800+ words
• Eight different chapters had over 2000 words in them: one each in the 2000, 2100, 2200, and 2300 ranges; two chapters were 2400+ words long; two had over 2500 words.
• Two chapters - one dealing with Jolene's cheating boyfriend, and the other when she met the brothel madam - had over 3000 words.
• One chapter had Jolene tackle a dungeon, and that was my longest one at 3105 words.

I even think I slightly improved on my chapter titles! I started off kind of blah and straight forward, but I feel like I got more intriguing as I went:

1. Finding a Place to Belong
2. Growing Attached
3. Falling in Love
4. First Heartbreak
5. Rediscovered
6. Moving on
7. LIAR!
8. Meeting the Fox
9. Winter Smiles
10. Fox in the Chicken Coup
11. Life as an Adventurer
12. Stargazer
13. Tale of Myrica
14. Love, Despite Yourself
15. Here to Stay
16. Running Away
17. Remind Me of Someone
18. Always Forward
19. A Night to Remember
20. Harrowing Caverns
21. Who Are You?
22. Wine Ruins Everything
23. Let Me be Your Friend
24. Breaking Her In
25. Breaking the Illusion
26. Parasite

Another stat that amused me was the inconsistent "screen time" of each of Jolene's loves. I originally thought that Jacob - the first and strongest love of Jolene's life; the ruler all others are measured against - would have the most chapters. She loved him the most. She was with him the longest. He was the most important to her. Yet, Searl, a man she's all but forgotten, has the most chapters dedicated to him. Here's the breakdown:

• Jacob: four chapters;  8543 words covering a NINE YEAR relationship. Jolene was five, and Jacob was seven when they first became friends; Jolene was ten and Jacob was twelve when they realized they had romantic feelings for each other; when Jacob turned thirteen he unofficially proposed to Jolene; right after her fourteenth birthday he announced his engagement to another woman.
• Teo: three chapters; 5427 words; roughly six-month relationship
• Parvil: three chapters again, but 5714 words covering the feverously short six-week relationship. There was also about two months of friendship building first, though....
• Jesan: five chapters; 9006 words. In truth, 1389 of those words were an impromptu chapter telling the mythilogical story behind a constellation, but the remaining 7617 words covered their four-month relationship.
• Searl: whopping six chapters and 11,815 words. Not too shabby for someone Jolene dated for five months, and really couldn't give two-shits about anymore. I guess he gets extra time because he was her first lover.

While I tried to limit my writing to weekdays only, giving myself weekends off for socializing, I seemed to write fairly close to writing daily anyway. The 50,883 words was actually written within 23 words once you take out the days I failed to write anything for the story. Not to say I didn't write anything at all; just not for the story. Pretty impressive; only missing seven days, and managing an average daily word count of 2212. Of course, with days only having 200-some words; that meant I had to pick up the slack a LOT on other days. End result is still the same, though: